Work @ Suzhou (Part 1)

I flew to Shanghai on Wednesday morning for some installation work in a company in Suzhou. This is my first time in Suzhou and really looking forward to the trip. Suzhou has been famous for her Chinese classical gardens, and hoping that I’d have ample time to visit some of these gardens.

I stepped out of Shanghai Pudong airport at 2pm, after a 5-hour flight from Singapore. The transportation arranged by my client’s company was already waiting for me at the gate. He told me the journey to Suzhou was only 2 hours, instead of 4 hours as said by my colleague. I was delighted. That meant I’d have more time to walk around!

The moment I stepped into Suzhou, I was surprised by what I saw. The car was driving along Xian Dai Avenue, a major road within Suzhou Industrial Park that leads to the city centre, and on both sides of the road were artificial greeneries that somehow reminded me of Marine South and Esplanade Drive. On one look I knew this must be the work of a Singaporean, and indeed it was! I was told later that this Industrial Park is actually modelled after Singapore. But this Industrial Park was much bigger than our local one. Although the road’s somehow a straight one with not much traffic lights and light traffic volume, it still took me 20 minutes or so to get to the city.

The hotel I stayed in was right in the heart of Suzhou city, not very far from the shopping and dining zones (Suzhou’s city centre isn’t too big anyway). After checking in, I unpacked some of my things and out I go to explore the city. Without a map with me, the first thing on my mind was to find a decent bookshop and buy one local guidebook. It took me quite a while to find a bookshop, but it was selling old vintage books. Nevertheless I decided to just give it a try. I did not find any maps or guidebooks to my liking. Inside the shop, a Caucasian lady looking for Chinese paintings approached one of the sales staff for help. She was looking for paintings of the Longevity Deity, but she did not know his name, hence she tried describing how he looked like, but apparently the sales staff did not understand her. I knew what she wanted, and told him what she wanted in Chinese. She got what she wanted and was very happy. How great it feels to be a bilingual Singaporean!

It was dinner time, but I did not know what to eat. I chanced upon this Chinese fast-food restaurant near my hotel and decided to try it out. Such Chinese fast-food restaurants are not uncommon in China, but to me it is something unique as there isn’t any such restaurant in Singapore. I think this is a good concept to serve Chinese food in the style of western fast-food restaurant style, instead of just restricting it to just high-class restaurants or the hawker centres and kopi-tiams. Anyway, my dinner cost me only 15RMB. That’s quite cheap, as it comes complete with a main dish, an egg dessert, 2 small chicken wings and free flow of drinks.

After dinner I decided to take a stroll in the shopping district. I got myself some Yueju, Xiju and Kunqu VCDs. I was very happy that I managed to find the Xiju “The Pearl Pagoda” (Zhen Zhu Ta), which was one of the best traditional shows of Xiju genre. I also passed by some snacks stall selling Guihua and Haitang cakes. I decided to try them, as I’ve long heard about how delicious these cakes are. However to my disappointment, they are not as nice as described.

I walked around for a while more, and came to this Taoist temple called “Xuan Miao Guan”. This is a very old Taoist temple, but it was closed for the day already. The courtyard however was still open, with shops selling things like Suzhou embroideries to collectibles still operating for business. None of these shops interested me, so I left after a while, planning to return again tomorrow in the afternoon to visit the main temple.

I was tired after walking about aimlessly, so decided to head back to hotel to rest. I watched some Chinese opera programmes on CCTV-11 until I eventually fell asleep…